But I WANT to Like It

There are a few authors and series in the science fiction and fantasy community that are, ostensibly, considered essential reads. But not every person is going to like any given book, even if it is a staple. Yet people still sit down to read them, not generally knowing how they’ll feel in the end.
This leads to an almost funny phenomenon every couple of weeks in my fantasy reading and writing groups.
“I tried to read X by Author, and I didn’t really like it. Then I tried Y by Author, and I couldn’t even get through it.” Repeat for three or four different books. Then they’ll ask “oh! Which book should I try next? What am I missing?” And it takes almost everything in me to not reply in the comment thread “maybe you just should read something else.”
Sometimes I do…actually…comment that in much kinder words.
There was a creator on the horror side of BookTok who was presenting the Stephen King books she had DNF’d and why. As someone who’s also DNF’d a couple of Stephen King books, my curiosity was piqued, expecting maybe three or four entries on this list, at most. By the end, she had listed a dozen books. Now, admittedly this is only about twenty percent of his bibliography, and if she enjoyed every other book, then she does like the vast majority of his work.
But she’s not the only one. I see it all the time. “This is the fifth book I’ve read of theirs, and I’m finally done trying.”
Why did you even get to number five??
It’s not hard not to ask the question in these scenarios “what will it take for you to decide that maybe…you just don’t like this author?”
Me, I don’t have time to not enjoy a hobby. So if I come across a book that I don’t like (whether I decide to push through or not), it would take an act of serious convincing for me to read another book by the same author. Even a book I’m neutral on will push that author, as a whole, farther down in the to be read pile in favor of other books that seem more interesting or authors I’ve enjoyed more. With as many books as I’d like to get through before I die, the priorities make sense to me.
There’s also something to be said for cautious optimism as a book doesn’t unfold the way we expect. I think we’ve all been there. A book should have all the parts and pieces that would lead it to being one of your new favorites. Maybe it’s even an author you’ve read before. But something just doesn’t come together, in the end, and the book is disappointing. And maybe it was that optimism that kept you trying to push to the end when otherwise you might have given the book up. Maybe you just can’t stand the idea of not finishing a story no matter how much you dislike it, so there’s really no option.
In those instances that emotion of “I wished I liked this” has some reasoning behind it. It’s a sort of mourning for the experience that could have been.
But what leads a person to voluntarily go through that reading experience a second time? Or third? Or fourth? What sends a person howling down the tubes of the internet lamenting that they’re reading something they don’t like when, in all actuality, there’s nothing forcing them to keep on with it. Their horrors are wholly self-inflicted.
Part of it is, of course, probably good old-fashioned FOMO. We see everyone in our given hobby community is doing xyz, we want to be a part of it. To be able to engage in conversation or be in on the joke as the case may be. It’s a natural inclination for a social animal.
I often wonder, though, if there’s something a touch more insidious in this practice. The books I tend to see this phenomenon with are very very popular. They’re best sellers. Modern classics. Then you read it, and you don’t particularly care for the book in question. It doesn’t resonate with you. Perhaps you can’t even see why other people like it. Now imagine that’s never happened to you before. You’ve never felt the friction of going against the grain of popularity. You’ve always found yourself falling in line with overall group opinion for better or worse. What would you think of yourself, then? Would it be enough to cause a sense of existential disenchantment? Would that, possibly, lead you to try again and again and again just to close that gap between expectation and experience? Would you think something is wrong with you that you didn’t consider before?
Is it possible that this is what leads people to read books they don’t like over and over?
Is it really that deep?
Maybe so, maybe not.
But there is something there. Something that drives a reader to go “I hate this….but I need to keep reading…” and whatever that is says immense amounts about us as readers as a whole. And maybe even people.